Routine
by LadyVegeets
Summary: Vegeta becomes entranced with Bulma's routine. A short, one-shot Vegebul fic, set during the 3-year-gap.


_**AN: Totally inspired by one of GalacticShark17's ideas, so this drabble is dedicated to him. ;) Checkout his Vegebul art on twitter.**_

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' **Routine'**

Vegeta didn't know how it started; gradually, he supposed, slowly over time, like most habits were wont to do. At first he never stayed with her, sleeping with Bulma only to calm a need. A simple need for sex he told himself, but even he couldn't fool himself into thinking it wasn't something more, wasn't a need fueled from loneliness, from finding solace in a beautiful woman who happened to be the only person on this useless planet that could put up with him, the only person who really acknowledged that he existed at all.

There were times he felt like he didn't, exist that is. He was a ghost, a dead man walking - not even figuratively, but literally after the events of Namek. He was without his people, his planet, and now, after the shit-shows that had been Namek and then the Colds' return, he was bereft of his pride and purpose, vengeance stolen from him first by Kakarot and then by some upstart lilac-haired boy. So he had latched on to a new purpose, the legendary, but even he knew, late at night as he stared up at a foreign ceiling, that it was a desperate goal he was clinging to. It was the only thing stopping himself from completely losing his mind and ending it all in some spectacularly suicidal venture, to die, gloriously, and be swallowed up and forgotten by the universe, just as his people had been, just as all the millions of other peoples and planets had been that he himself had ended in his years of servitude. The legendary was all he had left.

That, and _her_.

She'd invited him into her home, kept him clothed and fed and even helped build a place for him to train in to reach his goal. It aggravated him, tore him up in fury that such a weak, insipid woman would do all that for him, expecting nothing in return. Did she have no pride, no self preservation, no fear to be catering to the very man who only months before would have reveled to see her and her people dead? Who had tried to do so, no less?

And did she have no _modesty_? He watched her from under half-lidded eyes, strutting about the compound in her precious little outfits with her bobbing blue curls and large blue eyes, tracking her movements like a panther tracking prey, she the very epitome of femininity. He came to understand that she annoyed him for entirely different reasons than he'd once thought, found that he couldn't stop watching her whenever she was in sight. She was magnetic. Hell, he even found himself tracking her ki when she _wasn't_ in sight, not an easy feat either given how pathetically weak her ki was. And what was worse, she seemed to know exactly when he was watching her, always looking over her shoulder at him and giving him those small but disarming smiles as their eyes met, and he'd look away in irritation, pretending to be disgusted with her when in reality he was disgusted with himself.

Then one day she broke up with that pathetic excuse of a mate, and things slowly changed. Her smiles grew sadder, and he stopped looking away from them. Sometimes she'd engage him in conversation, and he found himself being less and less abrasive in his replies. Months passed, and the weight of his unattained goal bore down on him, but not as much as the loneliness did, and he could see it was crushing her too, day by day, her spirit breaking just a little more. She was Light, a fragile thing, not used to the blackness of solitude, but he was Darkness incarnate, molded from solitude, shaped by it. He was drawn to her loneliness like a moth to a flame, at first amused by her melancholy, but then placated by it, as if her misery somehow salved his own.

He couldn't remember who initiated first, a look that lasted too long, a longing that burnt too strong, but he found himself kissing her one night, under a star filled sky. He'd taken her delicate, tiny body in his powerful arms and for a short, blissful while, he wasn't alone, someone was there with him, totally _with_ him in that moment, wrapping her pale thighs around his hips, clawing at his arms and back, shivering in delight as he thrust inside of her, moaning _his_ name with need.

And then it was over. He'd left her, embarrassed and uncomfortable with the intimacy of the moment, with the way she looked at him, those impossible blue eyes that looked right through him and somehow, miraculously, found something to like, something he couldn't even see himself. She was so pure, kind, radiant. She was everything he wasn't; he was hard, scarred, and black through and through, stained with years of violence, betrayal, murder and pain that she would probably quake in fear to know the half of. He was disgusted with himself, and he pushed her away, pushing her out of his mind and physical space with an endless string of katas and ki blasts.

He lasted a week before caving. She was only too happy to take him back. She was a talker in bed, go figure, but he was far more prone to listen to the words she said when they were wrapped up in each other than when she prattled on uselessly in the day. Under him, she gasped his name in a way that made his blood roar, and she whispered sweet encouragements and gentle praise that, despite his better judgement, made him swell in pride and ache to earn more of. She was more than generous, with her body, her words, her money, her affections… Vegeta had lived a hard and sparse life, denied everything, given nothing, but now he found himself becoming greedy, wanting to take it all from her and more.

Perhaps that's why he started staying with her even after fucking her, finding himself less and less inclined to leave her right after, demanding more of her attention, her time and even a space on her feather-down bed. He found it preferable to fall into an exhausted sleep in her bed, where he had the first peaceful, nightmare-free dreams of his life, and where he woke up to the sight of her curled up next to him, naked and more gorgeous than the new sun that rose each morning, bathing them in its pale light.

He'd thought her lazy and undisciplined, but he soon learned that to be a mistake. She slept in when she could, but on days when she had meetings or work to attend to, she was up even before he was, and she had a routine to fix her hair and 'put on her face' as she called it that she adhered to every morning. She sat in front of a vanity in her room, wiping down her porcelain features before gently rubbing in some cream. She didn't wear a lot of make up, not like other women he'd seen, but it was just enough to accentuate her features. It was the most curious of regimens, the gestures alien and baffling to him. When he first watched her he'd sneered, bemused by the ridiculousness of her actions, amazed at her vanity. They fought because he said as much, and she had a temper to rival his own. She threw him out of her room, furious and beautiful, a human typhoon, slamming the door in his face. As he stared at the door, he had to control himself not to break it down and take her all over again, just to mess up her precious 'face' and sneer at her in victory as she came apart beneath him, as he knew she would. Instead, he found himself walking away, letting her win this time.

She forgave him a few days later, and he watched her at her vanity the following morning, still incredulous of her routine, but he stayed his tongue, and afterwards he supposed that he couldn't argue the results of her work.

And that's how it happened; gradually, and over time. They'd fallen together like two mismatching puzzle pieces that had broken and reformed to fit the other. He found himself lying in bed in the mornings, watching comfortably as Bulma made up her face, her hands moving gracefully, artfully, applying various products with practiced ease, each stroke soothing and precise, going through the steps of her own personal kata. She glanced at him now and then in the mirror, watching him watch her, and lately she would smile his way. To his chagrin, he'd started smiling back, feeling something dark and possessive curl in the pit of his belly as he watched her.

It was not just her routine anymore. It was theirs. And he'd be damned if he was going to let any man-made androids ruin that for him. The legendary was still his goal, but it was no longer _the_ goal, just a means to an end. He'd finally found a sliver of happiness for himself, and perhaps within it, he could find a sliver of salvation.

Slowly, gradually, over time.

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—o0o—

 _AN:_

 _Wrote this on the weekend when I needed a writing break from 'Friends'. Banged this out in about an hour, a bit of verbal purging, kind of a writing stream of consciousness, if you will. I kind of like the poeticness of it. Hope it's not too pretentious. What do you think?_

 _~ LadyVegeets_

 _p.s. characters are obviously not mine, they belong to whoever owns DBZ - Akira Toriyama most likely._


End file.
